Re: Postgres server crashing unexpectedly.

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 12:23 PM, umashankar narayanan
<umashankar(at)graffiti(dot)net> wrote:
> Kevin,
>
> The full version of Postgres is 8.3.1. It is running on Microsoft Windows
> 2003 Standard 32-bit on VMWare.
> On the system logs around this time, the only message that we receive is
> that the PID crashed.
>
> All that I see on the postgres log before the crash is the below message:
>
> 2012-03-07 11:56:12 EST LOG:  loaded library
> "$libdir/plugins/plugin_debugger.dll"
>
> No other postgres processes are lingering. I did confirm that no other batch
> jobs or monitoring jobs were running during this time, that would grab the
> same shared memory block.
>
> Thanks!
> Umashankar
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: Kevin Grittner
>
> Sent: 03/08/12 01:25 PM
>
> To: umashankar narayanan, pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
>
> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Postgres server crashing unexpectedly.
>
>
>
> "umashankar narayanan" <umashankar(at)graffiti(dot)net> wrote:
>
>> Version : 8.3
>
> Please give the full version and a bit more information about the
> environment it's running in:
>
> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Guide_to_reporting_problems
>
>> 2012-03-07 11:57:20 EST LOG: server process (PID 5944) exited
>> with exit code 128
>
> Was there anything in the PostgreSQL log ahead of this to give a
> clue what went wrong and caused this? Is there anything in any of
> system logs from around this time?
>
>> 2012-03-07 11:57:20 EST LOG: terminating any other active server
>> processes
>
> This is normal -- when one process crashes this hard, it can leave
> shared memory in a corrupted state, so PostgreSQL restarts to get a
> clean environment with minimal down time.
>
>> [each client process logging its termination]
>
>> 2012-03-07 11:57:21 EST LOG: all server processes terminated;
>> reinitializing
>
> OK, it's trying to restart so clients can re-connect and continue.
>
>> 2012-03-07 11:57:22 EST FATAL: pre-existing shared memory block
>> is still in use
>> 2012-03-07 11:57:22 EST HINT: Check if there are any old server
>> processes still running, and terminate them.
>
> Something is still hanging on to the PostgreSQL shared memory block.
>
> Are any postgres processes lingering? Are you running anything else
> which might be grabbing the same shared memory block?

If I remember correctly this bug was fixed in later windows versions.
Can you try upgrading to 8.3.latest?